One of the advantages that the Internet provides to consumers is the ability to research specific products or services and find out information about those products or services before making a purchase. A popular venue for researching products or services is user reviews. A review is an evaluation of a product or service, such as a video game, a book, a home appliance, a computer, etc. These reviews (including reviews for services) may collectively be referred to herein as “product reviews.” In such product reviews, the reviewer typically includes a short summary of a user's reason for purchasing (or not purchasing) the product or service. In addition to the critical evaluation, the reviewer may assign a rating (e.g., 1 star to 5 stars) to indicate how happy the reviewer is with the product being reviewed.
While product reviews may assist a user in deciding whether to purchase a product or service, it would be beneficial if the user could have confidence that such reviews could be trusted. That is, a user would have a more meaningful shopping experience if the user had confidence that the review's author had “good judgment.”
Attempts have been made by websites, such as www.amazon.com, that collect reviews and ratings for products and services, to allow users to indicate whether they like specific product reviews. For example, a website (e.g., www.amazon.com) may indicate the number of people (e.g., 117 of 119) who found a particular product review helpful. However, this is a general rating and is not personalized to reflect the preferences of a specific user. As a result, it is difficult for a user to determine whether a highly rated review is really useful to him/her personally.
Hence, there is currently not a means for providing relevant product reviews to the user to aid in his/her purchasing decision.